English Literature with History BA (Hons)

You’ll investigate ideas of the body as ‘natural’ by examining its role in culturally constructed ideas of gender, race and sexuality.

You’ll explore how the body can be seen as the site of both conformity and resistance, identification and otherness.

Get an introduction to theoretical approaches to reading the body in literature, such as gender theory and posthumanism, as well as key terms and concepts, including queer, abject and grotesque.

You’ll complete the module viewing the body as a lightning rod for questions of belonging, power and social change.

Immerse yourself in world literature classics and modern texts written in English or translated from other languages. Analyse stories that address shared human concerns like environment, power, ethnicity and gender.

You’ll discover how reading diverse voices fosters a spirit of intellectual curiosity, and discuss and debate literature’s role in an increasingly connected world.

In this module, you'll dive into theories and debates challenging assumptions about artistic quality.

Through key texts spanning from the 19th century to the present day, you'll uncover the contextual forces and power structures influencing critics.

You’ll shed new light on popular fictions' literary functions and cultural impacts, and sharpen critical thinking skills to form educated opinions on what compelling storytelling means to different communities.

Through diverse works, you’ll develop your ideas and apply new concepts, including narrative theory that helps you understand how stories are constructed, and can spark your own literary creativity.

You’ll take part in lectures and group discussions to debate genres and conventions. You’ll nurture your critical awareness, research skills, and essay management, preparing you to examine life’s mysteries through storytelling.

This module will also set you up with all of the referencing skills you'll need to navigate the rest of your degree.

You'll explore fundamental assumptions about what it is to read, write and interpret texts, using select literary texts to examine the links between literature and theory, and to produce increasingly critical and complex readings.

This module will help you get to grips with concepts and ideas that will be crucial to your study of literature throughout your degree.

You’ll analyse diverse literary prizes – from the Booker to the Women’s Prize and beyond – and debate the complex criteria applied in judging literary value.

This module gives you access to the commercial world of literary publishing and prizes, offering you the chance to develop professional skills and plenty of opportunity for literary analysis

You’ll use case studies and exercises to see how research develops from initial ideas to finished works.

You’ll review resources and arguments to improve your research skills, and work with other students to refine your dissertation proposal through feedback and peer review.

This module will also help enhance your employability skills through bespoke activities and assessment.

You'll analyse key crime writing texts from detective fiction to philosophical writings on crime and punishment, considering the way they represent criminals, the police, the ethics of the death penalty, as well as historical contexts and theoretical approaches.

This module invites you on an investigative journey through the ethics, identities and politics underpinning tales of crime.

You’ll discover how literature draws on our modern anxieties around climate change, as well as our conflicted relationship with nature, and helps us address these issues.

By investigating the methods and motivations behind ecocritical approaches in literature, you’ll consider the ways in which ecocriticism, ecofeminism, and postcolonial ecocriticism can be used to focus on issues of ecocrisis, environmental justice, sovereignty and power.

There’s also a strong focus on gender, identity, the body, and the relationship between humans and environmental others.

You’ll look at diverse genres that shed light on historical moments such as slavery, post-colonialism, suffrage, second wave feminism and post-feminism.

You’ll analyse how transnational and gender identities are constructed and expressed in a global context, honing skills for contextual literary analysis alongside independent research.

On this module, you’ll explore the evolving power of media to represent reality, sway opinion and shape identity from the age of empire through swelling post-war pop culture.

Examining sources like newspapers, propaganda films, early TV and more, you'll investigate questions like: What “truths” did the British public consume during wars and upheavals? How did entertainment and advertising convey visions of leisure, lifestyle and “the good life”? And who was included or excluded from depictions of Britishness across eras?

Discover how the media we ingest informs how we envision ourselves, our communities and aspirations - both past and present.

You'll explore early modern Europe's complex world through everyday objects, analysing diverse artefacts - shoes, monuments, religious objects, food - and how they offer new perspectives for our understanding of the past and the present.

You'll consider how the study of objects can lead to new interpretations of historical narratives such as 'the consumer revolution', the development of a global economy, the emergence of new forms of inequality, and changing understandings of public and private.

You'll unearth the multiple lives and 'afterlives' of objects, engaging with debates about their significance and importance in heritage contexts in the 21st century, with access to some of the rich material culture available within the city, including the Mary Rose Museum.

You’ll evaluate sources such as legal records, cheap print, newspapers and novels, to discover what was considered a crime during this period and explore changing approaches towards ‘deviant’ behaviour.

You’ll see how behaviours we now consider private were publicly policed, and how this involved religion and the community. You’ll analyse changes from corporal punishment and torture towards modern ideas of policing.

You’ll also consider debates about the impact of urbanisation on patterns of crime, and the use of criminal prosecution as a means of social control, for example in relation to enforcing gender roles and controlling the poor.

You’ll dig into the cultural context of violence in Shakespeare's age, analysing how poetry and performance play on complex dynamics of authority, resistance and ideology.

Through Shakespeare’s works, you’ll develop your own perspectives on the role of war and peace in sixteenth-century English culture.

With a minimum 80-hour commitment, you’ll apply what you’ve learned so far on your degree to real-world professional settings within our community of local businesses, social enterprises, and third-sector organisations.

You’ll have support from interactive workshops, tutorials, and guest speaker events, encouraging you to set achievable professional goals and evolve your professional identity.

You’ll analyse American texts against the backdrop of intellectual, social and political change, evaluating how writers grappled with emerging ideas around national identity, race, gender and more.

By honing skills for contextual analysis and independent thought, you’ll form your own interpretations of iconic works that reflect the American experience.

On this module, you’ll explore philosophical ideas around spaces and places in texts from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century.

You’ll learn how to interpret spatial narratives through your evaluation of interior and exterior spaces, town and country, rooms and landscape.

You’ll analyse how creative works draw on wider cultural anxieties around industrialisation, race, class, and evolving gender roles.

In this module, you’ll explore European colonisation of Africa, asking questions like - how did they justify colonial rule, and how did African peoples respond to these colonisers?

You’ll learn how, after World War II, colonial rule was increasingly challenged from both within the empire, by growing African demands for political rights, and in the international arena, with the global trend towards trusteeship, development and self-determination.

You’ll also explore European relations with Africa in the post-colonial era, looking at themes which may include ideas about civilisation, universalism and race, modern attempts to 'rehabilitate' empire in the media, and the legacies of colonialism in Britain, Europe and Africa.

On this module, you’ll explore key areas of the history of slavery in the Atlantic World, and highlight significant themes and debates.

Themes you’ll think about include the intersection of ideas of race, gender, and slavery, the inherent violence of the institutions of slavery, the persistent forms of resistance by the enslaved, and the development of anti-slavery thought and practices, including revolutionary action and mass campaigning.

Led by a subject specialist, you'll study how the practice and ideas related to empires and/or identities shaped the lives of people in a specific time period, and how they themselves resisted or negotiated the impositions of forms of inequality.

Example topics include:

The Opium War, 1839-1842

Explore how two empires – Great Britain and China – came into direct confrontation for the first time in the nineteenth century and how the military campaign has been remembered by successive regimes in generations afterward.

Reformers, Rebels and Refugees: Religious Identities in Elizabethan England

Investigate how a range of people supported, resisted or conformed to a period of profound religious and political change, and how identities and communities were formed and reformed in late 16th century England. 

Racism and Anti-Racism in Post-war Britain

Discover how questions of migration, race, identity, and belonging were being understood and negotiated as Britain transitioned away from its role as an imperial power. Examine the various ways in which people experienced racism, and as well as the myriad means by which this discrimination was challenged. 

The Making of the German Nation: Germany during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century

Examine the fluid concept of German national identity across a turbulent history spanning war, empire, division and crisis. You’ll discover how Germans defined themselves and their nation from the early 19th century through Nazism's ascent and the difficult rebuilding of broken post-war societies. 

These cultures reflected perspectives on the world and changing values, revealing important insights into the hopes, fears, and identities of people and society.

Many forms of popular culture have substantial historical roots - including literature and music - whilst others are very modern - such as film and television.

You'll start by studying two topics, before deciding to specialise in one of these for your final assessment.

Example topics may include:

Cinema-Going in Wartime Britain

Explore how cinema functioned as both a form of propaganda and escapism in wartime Britain, and examine the ways that class, gender and national identities were challenged, negotiated and reinforced on and off the screen. 

Accidents and Safety in Britain, c.1850-1970

Examine how accidents and risks tell us about the ways modern British society was structured, including people’s day-to-day concerns, how they lived their lives and how aspects such as class and gender had an impact on people’s safety.

Magic and Modernity: Supernatural Britain, 1800-1920

Investigate the changing nature of magic, the occult and supernatural beliefs in the nineteenth century. This history of the modern supernatural causes us to rethink how we view Victorian and Edwardian society and culture.   

It's up to you what your dissertation or project is about – this will be your chance to showcase your passion for English literature by choosing a subject area or topic that most interests you.

You'll draw on everything you’ve learned so far to investigate, analyse, craft and refine your dissertation or project, using existing texts, sources and artefacts to support your arguments and give them context. You'll have the support of a dedicated dissertation tutor to guide you throughout this module.

This real-world, project-based module lets you address an identified need or gap by designing an innovative product, service or resource.

With support from university staff and external partners, you'll demonstrate critical thinking, ethical awareness and project management abilities.

Your final project and presentation will showcase your employability and capacity for high-impact solutions.

You'll explore diverse literary perspectives on the Holocaust, from first-hand accounts to contemporary post-memory texts.

Through critical reading and innovative creative projects both in groups and on your own, you'll grapple with the ethics of memorialisation and the role of cultural memory.

You'll learn about the job application process from the perspective of both candidates and recruiters, thinking about what employers look for in graduates and how you can optimise your own professional profile.

Through mock interviews and assessments, you'll hone your skills and learn how to communicate your achievements and career goals, ready to take the next step after you graduate.

You'll trace the social anxieties and ideological structures conveyed in literary depictions of vampires, monsters and more as you explore every dark corner of this remarkable genre.

You'll develop and apply critical theories unveiling Gothic representation of identities, revolutions, environments and more, and express your ideas creatively through an essay or podcast.

On this module, you’ll analyse constructions of masculinity across US culture, interrogating literary and cinematic stereotypes.

You’ll work in groups to compare key theories and concepts, and consider how ideas of masculinity relate to other cultural and social constructs such as gender, nationality, race, class and sexuality.

You'll critically examine representations of appetite, consumption and the body across literary and historical texts from the era.

Debate themes like hunger and self-starvation, gluttony and excess, even vampirism and cannibalism.

Through close reading and contextual analysis, you'll uncover what writings on food can tell us about how the Victorians viewed issues such as gender, race, class, nation and sexuality.

You'll investigate diverse definitions and famous examples of the genre from across the globe, honing advanced textual analysis skills.

Through lively debates, you'll explore magical realism's relationship with history, culture and narrative form, focusing on issues including postcoloniality, the limits of realism, postmodern narratorial techniques, historiography and transculturation.

With a minimum 80-hour commitment, you'll apply what you've learned so far on your degree to real-world professional settings within our community of local businesses, social enterprises, and third-sector organisations.

You'll have support from interactive workshops, tutorials, and guest speaker events, encouraging you to set achievable professional goals and evolve your professional identity.

You’ll get an introduction to the role and representation of time in contemporary fiction, as well as to philosophies of time and temporality.

You’ll also consider the role of time in narrative - what time is and how it underpins and affects narrative structures.

Topics you'll cover may include the present; temporal direction, time, gender and sexuality, reading and readers, contemporary times, and endings and end times.